Missouri Historic Conference.

Missouri Preservation will hold the annual Statewide Historic Preservation Conference on Oct.19th-21 in Washington, MO at the St. Francis Borgia Jesuit Hall.

This year’s theme is Conserve, Preserve, Protect, which will focus on sustainability and historic preservation.

The featured keynote speaker will be Mike Jackson, FAIA is the acting Director of the Preservation Services Division of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. He is a founding member of the Association for Preservation Technology Committee on Sustainable Heritage and active in the development of green building standards and preservation policies.

Also featured will be a stone repair workshop with John Speweik, a historic masonry specialist for Speweik Preservation Consultants, Inc., based in Elgin, Illinois. He is an author, traditional building investigator, and brick mason and works with building owners and government agencies as a historic masonry advisor in addition to training masons on traditional stone masonry on landmark historic properties nationwide.

For More info call (573) 443-5946.

NASCAR THIS WEEK

By Monte Dutton

Champ Jimmie Lurks

The King is far from dead. The King lives.

With apologies to Richard Petty, Jimmie Johnson has been king of the Sprint Cup Series for four years and seems unlikely to abdicate the throne. Maybe Petty’s King with a capital K, and Johnson’s just king with a little one.

The latest victory, his 53rd, was at Dover International Speedway, where Johnson has won three of the last four Cup races.

"The tire that Goodyear brought back -- it’s the same as it was in the spring -- blackened up the track in a hurry, but really made it challenging after 30 or 40 laps. ... I had to fall back on my dirt-racing background."

For the record, Johnson’s "dirt-racing background" wasn’t at Eldora or Knoxville. It was through deserts. Johnson first made his reputation in off-road racing.

At 35 years of age, Johnson, a native of El Cajon, Calif., has already won four Cup championships. Only two drivers, Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, have ever won more. Neither ever won four in a row, an unprecedented achievement. Now Johnson seems on track to make it five.

Johnson isn’t boastful by nature, even though he has every right to be. He laughs easily but seldom jokes. Some find him boring off the track.

But not on it. He opened the Chase with a 25th-place finish. Guess what? He opened it with a 39th in 2006 and went on to win the championship. His quick recovery at Dover was typical of past performances. He and crew chief Chad Knaus have forged a relationship that serves as a model for every other such combination in the sport.

For much of the AAA 400, A.J. Allmendinger dominated. Johnson bided his time and ended up rising to the front and staying there for the final stages.

"We played it smart," he said. "He (Allmendinger) wasn’t ‘a Chase guy,’ so I didn’t feel good about letting him go, but when he got to me and put pressure on me, I let him by.

"Come the end of the race, he wasn’t there to have to fight with."..

Heard a female comedian say the other night that sometimes when a guy is asked what he’s thinkin’, and he says nothin’, it’s prob’ly the truth. She says men have the capability to do that.

‘Course usually ya think of doin’ nothin’ as not gettin’ anything accomplished. I’m sure the comedian would agree, doin’ nothin’, or thinkin’ nothin’ in her example, achieves a better result than other possible alternatives.

I’m sure there are a lotta parents who sometimes wish their kids would just do nothin’ for a while. I can personally attest that there are at least a couple a grandparents that long for a ten minute "do nothin’" time slot for grandchildren.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

---

Weekly Columns

CLICK and CLACK

TALK CARS

Dear Tom and Ray:

I got an e-mail this morning from our company’s internal security department about locking your car with the remote key fob. The memo cites the story of a woman in a shopping center who noticed two guys in a car watching her, and then, after she locked her car and walked away, she heard her car unlock. It says that car thieves have a device that can capture the frequency of your key fob, and then use it to unlock your car while you’re in a store. The woman claims that this was explained to her by the police. Is it true or an urban legend?

Thanks, Mike

Ray: It’s an urban legend, Mike. When locking key fobs were new, back in the 1980s, they would be set to a single, permanent frequency. And I suppose, in those days, if a thief had the right equipment, he potentially could capture the frequency and gain access to the car.

Tom: But there are two reasons why that’s extremely unlikely today. First, key fobs now jumble their codes. So each time you use the fob to lock your door, it generates a unique code that it uses only that one time. While there might be equipment capable of breaking through that system, it’s more likely to be owned by the "Ocean’s Eleven" crew that by a common burglar.

Ray: That’s the second reason why this story is unlikely to be true: Most people who break into your car to steal something off the seat are opportunists, not master planners. These guys go looking for a car that’s been left open, or they’ll see a computer on a seat and break a window to grab it.

Tom: So lock your car, and don’t leave it in my brother’s neighborhood.